Michigan’s State Legislature will require the state to get 100% of its electricity from “clean” sources by 2040.
It sounds nice, but what are the clean energy industry, the United Nations and “Big Green” organizations not telling us?
InsideClimate News reports that Michigan’s state legislature is poised to join states requiring 100% clean electricity.
Senate bill 271 requires the state to get 100% of its electricity from clean sources by 2040.
In this article, I will argue that we are not optimizing our climate policy unless and until we prioritize our ecosystems and resolve to increase our “biomass,” locally and globally.
Michigan is among several states hoping to address climate change by lowering the state’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.
Other states include California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine and Nevada. According to Clean Energy States Alliance, 23 states, plus Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico have adopted “100% clean energy” goals. California is going for 100% carbon-free electricity by 2045. Connecticut has a goal of 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040. Illinois wants to provide 100% clean energy by 2050. Maine wants 100% clean energy by 2050. And Nevada’s goal is to have 100% carbon-free electricity by 2050.
Why are we talking about adopting “clean energy” or “clean electricity”? Well, the official story is that we will thereby prevent climate change. And we don’t just want our energy to be clean. We want it to be reliable. And we in the U.S. want to be a leader in the development of clean energy technologies.
According to the United States Department of Energy, “Responsible development of all of America’s rich energy resources -- including solar, wind, water, geothermal, bioenergy & nuclear -- will help ensure America’s continued leadership in clean energy.”
They say this will lead to a promising energy future and that solar and wind will provide abundant amounts of clean and renewable energy, thereby eliminating the need for fossil fuels. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the amount of sunlight that strikes the earth's surface in an hour and a half is enough to handle the entire world's energy consumption for a full year.
No doubt this is true, but harnessing that energy requires high tech devices that are anything but clean, green or renewable. For more information on this, the single best resource I know of is the book Bright Green Lies, by Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith and Max Wilbert.
Back in the Michigan state legislature, Representative Jenn Hill says, “climate change is real and is an immediate threat to the economic prosperity of our state.” She says that severe weather tied to climate change is harming her community, citing 1) heavy snow that caused a roof to collapse and 2) heavy rain that caused a dog sled race to be canceled.
Rep. Jenn Hill is citing two instances where heavy precipitation (snow and rain) has caused economic damage in her district. The prevailing viewpoint is that carbon dioxide emissions cause extreme weather events.
Here is the logic.
Homo sapiens is about 300,000 years old. Human civilization is about 6,000 years old. But only in the last 150 years did we start making serious use of fossil fuels.
Fossil fuel usage has grown exponentially in the last 150 years. Our fossil fuel usage tends to double about every 25 years.
Fossil fuels emit carbon dioxide when we burn them.
Scientists have determined that carbon dioxide causes global warming.
Global warming causes climate catastrophes such as flooding, drought and wildfires.
If we want to tame the weather and the climate, we need to lower our carbon emissions by lowering our fossil fuel usage.
We can do that by switching to “clean” and “renewable” energy which, by definition, emits less carbon dioxide, thus lowering the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere and taming the climate.
Ok. Fine. Very good.
It’s logical enough, but is it the whole story?
What if greenhouse gases are not the sole and exclusive cause of extreme weather events? Are we going to look at other causes of extreme weather?
In the course of human civilization, we have, indeed, started to burn fossil fuels at prodigious levels. But what ELSE have we done to change the climate?
We have eliminated half of the living matter--or “biomass”--on earth.
What is biomass and why does it matter?
“Biomass” means the total weight of a collection of living things within a particular area. If you had an acre of forest and you could weigh all the trees on that acre, and if it turned out to be 50 tons, then you could say the biomass of trees on that acre is fifty tons. And then if you go in and cut the trees down and haul them away, then you’re left with nearly zero biomass of trees. So, cutting down all those trees greatly diminishes the biomass.
This is relevant because deforestation is happening on a large scale across the U.S., especially in the southern United States.
Biomass has benefits. When we reduce biomass, we lose the benefits. Biomass is a measure of habitat. When you have more biomass, you have more habitat. When you have more biomass, you have something that regulates weather and supports water cycles. When you have more biomass, you have a sponge that soaks up rain and releases it gradually into the streams. When you have more biomass, you have more water, which holds more heat, which tends to curb the extremes of hot and cold.
When you have more biomass--and more trees--the landscape will naturally attract and accommodate more rainfall. This is partly because cool, moist air accommodates rain more easily, whereas hot, dry air tends to repel rain. Also, trees emit bacteria and organic compounds that are essential for making water condense and then form raindrops.
What are the benefits of biomass, when it comes in the form of trees?
Trees have biomass. When we cut down all the trees, we lose the benefits of the biomass of those trees.
Trees help support healthy soil, because trees are plants. Plants take carbon out of the atmosphere and inject about a third of it into the ground, through their roots. When that carbon goes into the ground, it feeds the soil food web, and it also becomes soil organic matter, a series of complex molecules that have a spongy texture and virtually define healthy soil. Soil organic matter is a framework on which much of soil life depends. It also stores carbon, keeping it out of the atmosphere.
How is the biomass of healthy soil beneficial?
Healthy soil contains a soil food web, consisting of plant roots, bacteria and fungi as well as lesser known creatures such as protozoa and nematodes. All of these living things--if you weigh them together--constitute biomass. If you cut down the trees, you lose much of the soil organic matter and the soil food web. Therefore, you lose much of the biomass, and the benefits that go along with it.
How do caterpillars represent beneficial biomass?
Trees support caterpillars, because caterpillars eat tree leaves, primarily. In North America, the vast majority of birds rely on caterpillars to feed their young. No caterpillars, no baby birds. And trees largely rely on birds to spread around their seeds.
Thus, the trees increase the biomass of caterpillars, which increase the biomass of birds, which in turn increase the biomass of trees, in full circle. But this happens only if we allow these living systems to flourish. Too often we sabotage this whole process via excessive timber harvesting, development, road building, etc.
The point is that when you eliminate trees, you cause a chain reaction that eliminates many other living things and thereby eliminates much of the biomass.
How much biomass have humans eliminated?
According to the website of Greenpeace, which cites a study compiled by Canadian scientist Vaclav Smil, human activity over the last 5,000 years has reduced total global biomass by about 50 percent.
Smil writes that biomass of the earth has declined from over 1,000 Gigatons (1,000 billion tons) of Carbon at the dawn of agriculture to the current 545 Gigatons of Carbon.
So if you could go back 5000 years and weigh all the living things on earth and compare that with the weight of all living things today, the amount has declined by nearly half.
In all the coverage of climate change, where have you seen a proposal to reverse this downward trend and work to increase our biomass on earth? You may see bits and pieces here and there, but that’s about it. You don’t see this topic emphasized in the “scientific” climate literature or in climate journalism.
What effect does reduction of biomass have on our climate?
More biomass means more water, because all living things hold water.
We need more water. We need more water to be coursing through our plants and our ecosystems. And we need this on a large scale.
Here’s why. Water has a high “specific heat.” That means water is slow to warm up and slow to cool down. When water is warm, it holds the heat for a long time. When water is cold, it stays cold for a long time, while it warms back up.
This means water regulates temperature.
If a given acre of land holds a lot of water, it is going to avoid the extremes of hot and cold. It is not going to be as hot in the daytime, nor as cold at night. It is not going to be as hot in the summertime, nor as cold in the winter.
Conversely, the treeless, grassless desert or crop field gets hotter in the daytime and colder at night, as compared with a comparable area that has more trees and more grass and therefore more water.
Follow this logic:
Living things hold water.
Plants, animals, fungi, microbes are all mostly water.
When you eliminate living things, you eliminate water.
When you eliminate ecosystems, you eliminate water.
When you reduce biomass in a given area, you have reduced the amount of water in that area.
When we practice deforestation, we are eliminating water, because trees hold water, and trees support other living things (animals, fungi, microbes, other plants) which also hold water.
Living things contain water. For example, humans are about 60% water. Bacteria are about 75% water. Most plants are over 50% water.
So if you have a fully functioning forest ecosystem, it’s going to contain a lot of water.
When an ecosystem is being degraded, then that geographic area is losing a storehouse of water. We degrade ecosystems via excessive development, excessive deforestation and bad agriculture.
How does farming degrade ecosystems and reduce biomass?
Unfortunately, the way we do farming degrades the surrounding ecosystems. We till the soil far more than we should, thereby degrading the soil ecosystem and reducing its capacity to hold water.
(That would be understandable if we were growing food, but quite often we are not growing food. Quite often, we grow corn for ethanol, which is not food, and not very good fuel, either. And we grow corn for high fructose corn syrup, which is junk food, and not nutritious.)
So it’s misleading to say that we are using these countless acres of corn to feed the world. We could use this land much better than we do.
How does this relate to our climate?
If we had good soil, it would hold more water.
If we obtained most of our food from biologically diverse, local farms, then our farmland would hold more water.
How are water cycles good for our climate?
Ecosystems (in our forests, our farms and our landscapes) are good for water cycles. Ecosystems make our streams flow more steadily. Ecosystems make the rain fall more consistently. And ecosystems could go far to tame our extreme weather events, such as flooding and drought.
If we would care for our trees, we would thereby nurture our water cycles.
How do trees nurture our water cycles?
Trees do the following, if we allow them to flourish:
Trees intercept the falling rain.
Rain clings to trees leaves, bark, etc.
Trees slow the downhill progress of water, thereby making that water available to living things (e.g., the soil food web) along the way.
Trees inject carbon into the soil. This carbon becomes “soil organic matter,” which is the measure of healthy, living soil.
More soil organic matter means there is more carbon in the soil and less in the atmosphere.
Plus, all growing ecosystems absorb carbon. This is because all living things contain carbon. So when the ecosystem is allowed to grow and flourish, it takes more carbon out of the atmosphere.
What we are describing here is a process that could occur in all of our forests, farms and deserts … growing ecosystems absorb carbon from the atmosphere. And growing ecosystems absorb water, which nurtures all living things and tames the weather and climate.
How does this contrast with the mainstream “story” about climate change?
We hear endlessly that we will cool our climate when we get our greenhouse gases under control. But is this accurate? Is this responsible? Are we not leaving out a very important part of the story, the part where ecosystems could cool our climate and mitigate extreme weather events, all while absorbing carbon?
Are we following a rational, sensible course of action, looking at nature as a whole and exploring all our options? I think not.
Should we focus on carbon emissions or natural systems as the main solution to climate change?
It’s not an “either/or.” The scenario I’m describing above--where we nurture our ecosystems and allow them to grow and flourish--is a scenario where our ecosystems absorb prodigious amounts of carbon. So it’s not as if I’m suggesting that we forget about carbon. Quite the opposite.
I happen to think ecosystems are EVEN more consequential than carbon dioxide. I happen to think that our living systems are the quickest, cleanest, safest way to cool the climate.
But it’s not an “either/or.”
What bothers me the most is that those who insist that we focus exclusively on lowering carbon emissions don’t seem to have a plan for lowering carbon emissions. This is another conversation entirely, but the United Nations does not have a plan that will lower carbon emissions. And Mark Z. Jacobson does not have a plan that will lower carbon emissions.
Nearly all of the “Green New Deals” rely on the United Nations and Mark Z. Jacboson. I have read all the Green New Deals. I have read the United Nations reports. And I am not seeing anything that will reduce carbon emissions.
Why will existing plans not lower carbon emissions?
For one thing, we don’t have the land that is required to implement industrial scale solar arrays, wind farms or hydroelectric dams. For another thing, we don’t have the metals (e.g., copper, lithium, cobalt, etc.) that are required to implement even one full rollout of solar and wind. In other words, planners like Mark Z. Jacobson have not made an accounting of the “inputs” we would need to pull off this plan for “green energy.”
Plus, the United Nations is in love with economic growth. They think economic growth brings people out of poverty. And they think economic growth is consistent with lowering carbon emissions.
I don’t think you can grow the economy while reducing emissions. All plans for “decoupling” the economy from carbon emissions are speculative at best, and not based on historical experience.
Besides, how did we get the idea that, gross domestic product, i.e., GDP--i.e., the total amount of money changing hands in an economy--is somehow a proxy for human well being? I’m not saying economic growth is bad. I’m saying it’s irrelevant. We would do better to measure gross domestic happiness, as if the well being of people should be our focus, not the total amount of money changing hands.
And in any event, GDP correlates perfectly with carbon emissions. When GDP goes up, so do carbon emissions, and vice versa.
But I digress …
I will address these issues more at length in an upcoming post.
But if there’s any truth in my analysis, above, then Rep. Jenn Hill of Michigan will continue to have extreme weather events that harm the economy in her district, because nobody is doing anything that will lower carbon emissions. And not enough people are promoting the benefits that growing, thriving, flourishing ecosystems could confer on our climate, if we would make it a priority.
Here is an excellent video from Jimi Sol Eisenstein that explains, in five minutes, how plants cool the planet.
Great perspective. As the Lakota say, Mni Wiconi, water is life.
Among some articles from another Substack writer, I would like to reference this one about water, cloud formation and wind flows:
https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/biotic-pump-anastasia-makarieva-interview
https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/carbon-warming-water-cooling
Ah, by the way, Syntropic Agriculture seems to work towards soil food web enhancement and forest recovery with high productivity.